Santa needs your help! There are so many presents that he has to deliver to children all over the world. The reindeers are exhausted, and Santa is worried about whether they will be able to pull the sleigh this year. Join Santa’s Engineer Elves to look at the size and shape Santa’s sleigh and how it could be pushed or pulled. Students will have the opportunity to design their own sleigh for Santa and make a model to test.

On Christmas Eve, millions of children around the world will settle anxiously into bed, hardly able to contain themselves. What vision could possibly dance through their heads, turning them into twitchy, restless insomniacs for just one night? Chances are the children are thinking about toys, Santa Claus and his team of reindeer. If the children have been nice this year, jolly old St. Nick should be landing his sleigh on their roofs sometime late during the night.

Everyone has their own traditional image of Santa’s sleigh, but there is almost certainly more to it than just a sled and a team of eight reindeer. Although no one may ever know for sure just how Santa operates, we at Ecolinc have what we think are the most logical explanations for how the big guy accomplishes all that he does: science, technology, engineering & maths.

Year Level: F-2

Duration: 1 hour

You will receive a teacher guide with follow-up activities. The program will draw on the students’ imaginations and creative skills. It would be ideal if the school could provide an assortment of craft materials for students to also build their design.

No prior knowledge is required.

In this program students will:

• Learn that the way the sleigh moves depends on a variety of factors including the size and shape: a push or pull affects how it moves in the air, as well as landing on and taking off from rooftops.
• Compare and contrast various shapes and sizes of sleighs and the forces of push and pull
• Compare observations and make predictions about Santa’s sleigh with other students

In this video conference students will:

• Respond to and pose questions, and make predictions about Santa’s sleigh
• Participate in guided investigations, including making observations, using the senses, to explore and answer questions about Santa’s sleigh
• Use informal measurements when observing the size of and testing the distance travelled by Santa’s sleigh
• Use drawings to design Santa’s sleigh (mode of transport)
• Create a model of Santa’s sleigh and demonstrate (either with a push or pull) how it moves

Science: Science Understanding

• The way objects move depends on a variety of factors including their size, shape and material (VC2S2U10)
• Pushes and pulls are forces that can change an object’s movement or shape and can be represented in terms of strength and direction (VC2S2U11)

Critical and Creative Thinking: Questions and Possibilities

• Different kinds of question stems for gathering information and ideas (VC2CC2Q01)
• Modification as a strategy to generate a new idea or possibility (VC2CC2Q03)

Critical and Creative Thinking: Reasoning

• Words that show reasons and conclusions, and examples of how to use them (VC2CC2R01)
• The use of examples to support claims (VC2CC2R02)

Critical and Creative Thinking: Metacognition

• Verbal and non-verbal strategies to express and describe thinking processes, including for problem-solving (VC2CC2M02)
• Ways to make choices between alternative possibilities and propose a solution (VC2CC2M03)

Design and Technologies: Creating Designed Solutions

• Explore, generate and communicate design ideas through describing, drawing or modelling, using manual and digital tools (VC2TDE2D02)
• Use materials, components, tools and techniques to safely make designed solutions (VC2TDE2D03)